Beauty

Art show: M.A.C gets inspired by art

Beauty

Art show: M.A.C gets inspired by art

Artistry has always been at the core of M.A.C’s beauty phil­osophy, but this fall the artist has a different kind of starring role: To celebrate its heritage of creativity and colour, M.A.C challenged three multimedia artists to use palettes from Make-Up Art Cosmetics — the brand’s new colour collection — to create three portraits.

The project was a perfect fit for photographer Marilyn Minter. “The glamour industry is the central source for my art,” she says. After a makeup artist applied a generous amount of glitter pigment and mascara on the model, Minter says she “went in and messed it up. I don’t like to retouch or clean up freckles or sweat.” The resulting shot is an extreme close-up of her subject’s closed eyelid, an image that is both gritty and sensual.

Painter Richard Phillips, whose work is inspired by magazine clippings, chose to redo one of his paintings based on an image from a porn magazine. “In painting, you can create power through beauty, and when I speak of power I am speaking of creating unfulfilled desire,” he says. “This is advertising the unseen eroticism of the rest of her body. The painting is really an expression of sensuality.”

Maira Kalman, an author and illustrator, started sketching her fanciful portrait of a young lady using eye pencils and lipsticks. “Thinking too much about a picture can be the death of it,” she says, adding that her choice of colours came from taste and instinct. “Allowing beauty to take over is what this is about.”